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Sofia and the Return of Princess Ivy

A magical Sofia the First special called The Curse of Princess Ivy came out in 2014. It had everything--dragons, drama, fun a wicked princess, and a guest appearance by Rapunzel. Of course, that was back when Sofia's amulet was still purple and summoned Disney Princesses to help her when she was in trouble (with the exception of Pocahontas). Now that Sofia has reached the next level of being a wise and benevolent princess, her pink amulet sends her to help troubled princesses. The last episode of the show used this ability to reacquaint Sofia with the vengeful Princess Ivy and teach us that there is more to people than what they appear to be.

From a design standpoint, Princess Ivy is very unique. Her hair is reminiscent of Cruella de Vil from 101 Dalmatians with its split black and white aesthetic, but her face looks like that of a pretty youthful princess. She has a long dress with frills and ribbons like most classic princesses. However, the lack of bright colors that are iconic of other princess dresses is a hint to her true demeanor. Princess Ivy first appears as a curse to punish Princess Amber's immoral act of stealing Sofia's amulet. Amber is blinded at first by Ivy's classic princess traits, much in the same way that the Snow Queen charmed Kay. Amber looks up to Ivy at first, who uses her charm to flatter her. However, her true intentions were made clear when she used her black and white butterflies to suck all of the colors out of everything in Enchancia.

Ivy's personality may seem similar to that of a wicked queen, but her presumably good sister (who we never see) banished her before she had the opportunity to gain enough power to become queen. That's why when Amber frees her, she seizes the opportunity to take over Enchancia, appealing to Amber's love of compliments as fuel for her evil schemes. Ivy just wants a kingdom to rule, and she wants to rule it her own way, without color, like her homeland. She is very similar to Princess Kale from Princess Gwenevere and the Jewel Riders, who is jealous of her sister Anya for becoming queen instead of her. Ivy's most dangerous power, though, is her dragonflies, which erase people's memories. Thanks to the dragonflies, everyone forgot about Ivy by the end of the special except for Sofia. The dragonflies were not involved in her repeat appearance from last week.

"Ivy's True Colors" aired this past Friday. It showed us the new powers of Sofia's pink amulet in action. When the amulet brought her the island Ivy had been banished to, Sofia was as surprised to see Princess Ivy as she was to see Sofia. Ivy wanted no part in accepting Sofia's help until a skunk that she had befriended named Roma fell prey to a sleeping curse that also affected all of Sofia's animal friends in Enchancia. It was only then that Ivy realized she needed Sofia's help in freeing her black and white butterflies to pollinate the flowers that could cure the curse, even though it meant that her black and white world would be tainted with color. That was when Ivy realized that she was no different from any other princess when it came to her love for her animal friends.

The episode also saw the return of Miss Nettle, another character from an earlier season of the show. Miss Nettle was a rival to Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather, who felt unappreciated for her talents and sought revenge on Royal Prep Academy. She was defeated by Sofia and her friends but made a brief appearance in a later episode, where she tried to take back a magical flower that she had invented because she felt unappreciated yet again. In "Ivy's True Colors," she assisted Sofia and Ivy in harvesting the flower that cured the sleeping curse on the animals. She and Ivy later became unlikely allies, as they were both villains who turned out to be misunderstood, just like most antagonists from Sofia the First, beginning with Cedric the Sorcerer.

One thing I love about Sofia is that she has a way of charming everyone and solving problems without violence. In fact, that's the reason that Elena chose her to defeat the wicked sorceress Shuriki. Sofia's optimism and innocence are downright irresistible no matter how wicked someone may appear to be at first. She always assumes that people are misunderstood first unless they prove themselves otherwise. That's why Princess Ivy is only black and white in appearance, but her personality is more grey. Though it would be dangerous for her to have too much power, her island prison seems to have successfully mellowed her out and taught her the meaning of true friendship.

In a tradition that began with Snow White letting the wicked old crone into her cottage, princesses have always believed in giving people the benefit of the doubt. Belle solidified this by finding the good in a seemingly monstrous beast. Now that Sofia's powers have gone to the next level, she brings out the best in people more than ever before. Even though Ivy started out as a villain, Sofia helped her see that even she is capable of love, causing her to turn over a new leaf. Since Miss Nettle did the same and became friends with Ivy as a result, perhaps all a bad princess needs is a true friend to help them see the light and become good.

Back around 2012, a friend of mine sent me a press release about how Disney was making a new princess show about a little girl from a poor village who becomes a princess overnight when her mother marries the king. The endearing image of the little girl on the press release instantly caught my attention with her unique reddish-brown curls, playful expression, and gorgeous lavender dress that was dripping with pearl accents. Something about this description and image got me so excited for the series that I got to work right away on making a grown-up sized cosplay of Sofia's elegant gown. The series premiered on Disney Junior with a TV special called Once Upon a Princess in which Sofia received her legendary Amulet of Avalor and sang about her insecurities for her future life as a princess heroine in the song "Not Ready To Be a Princess." I loved her instantly. Over the next six years, she took me on a four season-long journey filled with Disney Princesses, fairies, mermaid…

The internet has been buzzing about Kingdom Hearts III finally getting a release date after fifteen long years of anticipation. Unless it gets delayed again, we will be able to catch up with Sora, Donald, and Goofy as they travel through the realms of various Disney movies on January 29th, 2019. There have been a couple of trailers dropped over the last few days revealing footage from Frozen, Tangled, Toy Story, Monsters Inc., Hercules, and Pirates of the Caribbean. For me, the biggest announcement came from the latter half of last night's trailer in which Larxene of Organization XIII remarked that Elsa might be one of the new seven pure hearts that they needed for their latest quest. Anyone who has played the first game knows that this is a reference to the Princesses of Heart, a select group of Disney Princesses who had their chance to become video game royalty when they got captured by Maleficent in an attempt to use their pure hearts to open the Door to Darkness. My biggest pe…

We all had lots of fun playing with princess dolls as kids and brushing their hair until it became ratty and tangled. For those of us who are older, there has is the option of purchasing pricier collectible dolls that are made with finer details in their hair and clothes and come with their own stands for display purposes. While princesses have never exactly been lacking in options for collectible dolls, the Disney Princess Designer Collection that was revealed at the D23 Expo in 2011 was the start of something special. Each princess had her own designer dress that looked like it came straight off a modern-day runway. The collection was released alongside lithographs, cards, mugs, and other paraphernalia featuring beautiful matching artwork. The dolls themselves weren't sculpted from your typical Barbie mold. They had fully articulated wrist and elbow joints, salon quality hair that stayed perfectly in place, bigger painted eyes, and long realistic eyelashes that you could actuall…

In 2008, the Philippines released a mermaid princess telenovela that was based on a popular graphic novel by Mars Ravelo in 1952. Dyesebel is loosely based on the story of "The Little Mermaid" with a few distinct differences. It was Dyesebel's mother, Queen Lucia, who first fell in love with a human and left the underwater world of Sirenea to be with him, sacrificing her memories of her life as a mermaid in the process. Dyesebel was born on land, but because of her tail, her mother returned her to the sea, entrusting her to her best friend, Banak, to raise her. Her human father, Tino, was murdered by humans who believed that mermaids were bad luck. Unaware of the circumstances of her birth, Dyesebel grew up curious about the human world until one day, she fell in love with a human and was doomed to follow in her mother's footsteps. The 2008 adaptation of Dyesebel is performed in the native Filipino language, Tagalog, but I was able to watch it with English subtitles …

If you're one of the five people on Earth who still hasn't seen the new Wreck-It Ralph 2 trailer that dropped this morning, I'm here to break it down for you. The trailer featured roughly the first half of a scene in which all of the living voice actresses for the Disney Princesses reprised their roles as Vanellope snuck into their secret internet headquarters that was presented at the D23 Expo last year. A screenshot released last week previewed the scene with Ariel missing, but now we see that she was just off-screen combing her hair with her favorite dinglehopper in a blinged out version of pink tea dress along with lots more animation of other the princesses in their oddly disproportionate new CGI style animation. Let's take a look.

For starters, it's a bit odd how Ariel and Cinderella have swapped the levels of bling on their ballgowns. In the 1950 animated movie, Cinderella's dress appeared to have made from a lightweight silvery-white fabric emblazoned w…

The internet went a little crazy when Entertainment Weekly released Disney's first promo photos of the fully costumed actors from their upcoming Aladdin remake last week. Many were disappointed with what they saw, which unfortunately tends to be the case for live-action remakes. For instance, Aladdin's signature purple vest was changed to red, making it closer to the Broadway version of the show. He was also given a relatively nice shirt underneath, which is more than a little confusing for those of us who remember how poor he was in the original film. Will Smith as the Genie looked a little too much like a normal human instead of a mystical blue entity, but apparently that's still coming. Princess fans were most excited to see previews of Jasmine's wardrobe. In terms of quantity, the internet did not disappoint. We now have images of three of Jasmine's looks that will be featured in the movie as well as a peek at her new handmaiden.

In my "Little Mermaid" origins post, I mentioned that there were three live-action movies in the works based on the beloved Hans Christian Andersen tale. Since then, a few announcements have been made about all three of these movies. One of them has a theatrical release date, and it's sooner than you might think. The circus-themed indie movie that's had a trailer out for several years now is coming to select AMC theaters on August 17th. That's in two months! I wish I could be more excited about it, but the plot looks a lot closer to the 2006 tongue-in-cheek teen mermaid movie Aquamarine than the fairy tale that it's named after. The trailer focuses on how a little girl's belief in mermaids has the potential to save the aquatic heroine who is held captive in a tank at a carnival. I've been feeling indifferent about this adaptation ever since the first trailer was released, but it's nice to know that I will have the option to see it on the big scree…

Sofia the First, everyone's favorite princess-in-training, has met every official Disney Princess that existed when her show began with the sole exception of Pocahontas. The power of her purple amulet granted her the ability to summon famous princesses whenever she was in trouble. Technically, she never met Anna either, but the episode "Olaf and the Tale of Miss Nettle" implied that she was supposed to meet her but got Olaf instead because her amulet was on the fritz. About a year ago, her amulet turned pink and granted her new powers. It now sends her to help princesses, meaning that the chances of her meeting Pocahontas at this point are virtually nonexistent. Why did they acknowledge every other princess movie except this one? Actually, they did acknowledge the 1995 animated classic in an episode of Sofia, but it was very subtle.

In the 2015 episode of Sofia the First, "The Secret Library," Sofia discovers a hidden passageway beneath her castle where a boat …